The American Chronicle 1 - Burr (17 page)

In June the British under General Clinton evacuated Philadelphia and began the long trek to New York City.

I attended the staff meeting where Washington presented his plan for attacking the enemy while they were in train. As usual, he elicited agreement from nearly everyone. Only Lee made his case for allowing the British to withdraw. As much as I respected Lee, I think Washington’s strategy, in theory, was sound. But in execution it was, as always with our famous commander, a disaster—or in this case a near-disaster.

Washington made his error at the very beginning. Overwhelmed by the exuberant Lafayette’s passion for renown (not to mention for his commander’s august legend), Washington first proposed that the French youth lead the assault with
General Lee’s
troops. Lee was rightfully angry. So Washington patched together, as only he could, a fatally divided command. If Lafayette attacked the enemy first, Lee would stand aside while he earned glory. Should Lafayette
not
have seized a hero’s laurels by the time Lee appeared on the scene, then Lee would take command. It was the sort of stupid compromise that works marvellously well in a congress but not at all on the field of battle. Final idiocy, Washington at the last moment re-arranged a number of companies in such a way that many of the division commanders had no idea whom they were commanding.

So much for the grand design.

Although not a general, I was given command of a brigade that included my own regiment and parts of two other Pennsylvania regiments. I had an excellent second-in-command, Lieutenant-Colonel Bunner, and, all in all, I was content. Yet by the morning of July 27, as I mounted my horse in a rain which was, without too much exaggeration, scalding, I began to sense disaster. Soldiers often do. Some electrical quality in the air communicates hours in advance victory, defeat, pain, death.

I was part of Lord Stirling’s division that commanded the American left, to the west of Monmouth Court House where the British army was entrenched. On orders from Stirling we spent the entire day and night of the 27th in the open, under a tropical sun that did us more damage than British guns. We were all light in the head. Many fainted; and some suffered paroxysms from the stroke. We were also prey to clouds of Jersey mosquitoes, the world’s largest and most resourceful.

Before the sun was up on the 28th I was leading my brigade along a sandy lane to the west and south of Monmouth Court House. There was a constant ringing in my head. Yet I was lucid, and can recall to this day the look of the spindly heat-withered pines that edged the road—trail, rather; can recall how the sergeant just behind me kept whistling over and over again the same two bars of “The World Turn’d Upside Down,” a song popular with the British army.

By noon we were on the high ground just west of a certain ravine on whose opposite side the advance troops of our wing of the army were supposed to make their first attack. I ordered a halt, to await orders.

Beneath us was a mosquito-whining swamp crossed by a narrow footbridge. On the far side, a forest and, somewhere, the enemy. I ordered the men into battle position. This was not easy, for every few minutes someone fainted. Colonel Bunner’s thermometer registered ninety-four degrees.

I exhorted the men not to drink too much water but since I could not be everywhere, dozens of bellies were soon swollen and cramped from guzzling. I, too, was inconvenienced by a diarrhoea that was to remain with me for the next five years, despite an invalid’s diet.

Shortly after noon we heard the first loud hollow blast of cannon. In all there were five reports from the direction of the court-house. Then silence. Another hour passed. Alarmed, I despatched a lieutenant to Lord Stirling with a request for orders.

At about three in the afternoon when the sun burned like a flaming cannon-ball above the pine-wood, battle was joined. Off to our right, but out of sight, we could hear the clatter of musketry fire; the whiz and thud of artillery. The Lafayette-Lee division after a long mysterious delay had begun to fight.

Suddenly I saw a flash of scarlet in the woods opposite. Simultaneously, scouts reported that a British detachment was now advancing through the woods, hoping to outflank General Lee’s advance position.

I gave the order for attack. Indian file, the men started to cross the bridge while I maintained a covering fire. In a matter of minutes the entire brigade would have been safely across the bridge and under cover. But fate intervened.

One of Washington’s aides materialised. “Stop those men, Colonel!” Wild eyes met mine.

I thought him mad. “I can’t stop them. They’re moving to take cover before the British get our range.”

“Stop them! Recall them! It is General Washington’s order.”

I swung my horse in such a way that it looked as if he had shied from the sound of bullets. Pretending to have heard nothing, I rode to the bridge. Something like a third of the brigade was now on the other side. Behind a row of pines the British were getting our range.

The aide followed me. “Colonel, I order you in the name of the commanding general to withdraw those men.” Sick from heat, the aide was interpreting, literally, an order based on Washington’s ignorance of the terrain, not to mention terror at the thought of yet another defeat: unknown to us at the edge of the swamp, General Lee had abruptly withdrawn from the advance position and many of his troops had interpreted the command to withdraw to mean retreat; and for the American soldier retreat is best done through flight.

Washington himself stopped the rout and ordered General Lee back to his post with a series of violent oaths. Then, after some hesitation, Washington decided to remain where he was and to stop the rest of us from advancing. Thus we lost, fatally, the initiative, thanks to Lee’s abrupt withdrawal and to Washington’s refusal to do more than make a perfunctory feint at the British position. What might have been a clear-cut victory for us was no more than a skirmish, ultimately beneficial to the outnumbered British who ought, in the normal course, to have been destroyed.

“These men will be murdered!” I shouted at the aide but he was adamant: right or wrong, Washington must be obeyed.

I stopped the crossing of the bridge. Safe in the woods, the enemy was now able to pick off one by one our men.

As I rode up and down our side of the swamp, shouting at the men to take cover, to return the enemy’s fire, I suddenly found myself flung like a stone through the air. The whole world had indeed gone upside down, I remember thinking as pine-trees upended around me.

I fell with a crash onto a sandy bank, winded but not hurt; my horse killed.

As I got to my feet, I saw Colonel Bunner being shot dead at the bridge. One third of the brigade was now dead; as many wounded.

The night was as hot as day. A copper moon illuminated the pine-wood where exhausted men slept; where the wounded moaned, gasped for breath, trying to live, to die.

I nursed the wounded until shortly before dawn when I collapsed in a field and did not awaken until the sun was well up. As a result I was dried out like an Egyptian mummy which I somewhat resembled. I had also been bled while I slept by a thousand mosquitoes. I could hardly walk.

In this highly debilitated state I learned to my disgust if not surprise that (unknown as usual to Washington, who had spent the night sleeping at the side of Lafayette on a mantel beneath the stars) the British army had departed, and were now safely on their way to Staten Island. The plan to intercept them had entirely failed; and we had sustained heavy casualties for nothing. Such was the “victory” for George Washington at Monmouth Court House.

When awakened by the news that the British army had escaped, Washington’s response was characteristic. He arrested General Lee for disobedience, and ordered a court-martial. I openly supported Lee, as did many others. Washington took note of us all, and few of Lee’s admirers were to earn promotion.

I even corresponded at some length with Lee while he was under arrest. At one point he wrote me that regardless of whatever sentence was imposed (a year’s suspension from duty, as it turned out), he intended to quit the army and “retire to Virginia, and learn to hoe tobacco, which I find is the best school to form a consummate general.”

I should note here two curious pieces of information that I was given in London by a permanent clerk at the war ministry. I do not vouch for their authenticity. The first was that when Charles Lee was captured by the British, they threatened to hang him for a deserter from the British army. To save his neck he persuaded them to let him go on condition that he persuade Washington not to interfere with their withdrawal to New York. When he failed to persuade Washington, he ordered the disastrous retreat at Monmouth Court House, saving the British army. The other information I find easier to believe: that during the Adams administration Alexander Hamilton was British Agent Seven, and paid for by London. Jefferson suspected this, but then Jefferson suspected all his enemies of treason and I never took his charges seriously.

With the breaking of Lee, Washington reigned supreme as military genius in the eyes of the states. Although Washington was never to defeat an English army, he had now won a far more important war—the one with his rivals.

“What was Washington’s most notable trait?” I once asked Hamilton when we were working together on a law case. The quick smile flashed in that bright face, the malicious blue eyes shone. “Oh, Burr, self-love! Self-love! What else makes a god?”

I SPENT TWO DAYS’ sick-leave near Paramus, at the Hermitage, with my future wife Theodosia Prevost. Then, ill as I was, I accepted Washington’s appointment as a sort of spy to try and discover whatever possible about the enemy’s shipping.

With a small group of men we ranged up and down the North River from Weehawk to Bergen, collecting gossip, some of it useful.

I was then given the task of escorting by barge a number of wealthy Tories from Fishkill to British-held New York City. This might have been enjoyable duty had I not been suffering from debilitating headaches as well as diarrhoea.

In October I asked to be given sick-leave
without
pay. I wanted to be under no obligation to Washington who granted the leave but insisted that I take full pay. Since this was unacceptable, I felt obliged to rejoin my regiment at West Point where I was promptly mistaken by a local farmer for Colonel Burr’s
son
.

THIS SECTION breaks off.

JANUARY 13, 1779, I ARRIVED at White Plains to take command of the Westchester Line that stretched some fourteen miles between the Hudson River and Long Island Sound. Below the line was New York City, the British army, and their friends the American Tories.

It was my task to regulate the passage of traffic between Tory New York and Whig Westchester. As it turned out, my actual work was to stop the plundering of the civilians who lived in the area. Stealing was the chief occupation not only of the troops under my command but of their officers as well. In fact, plunder was the principal occupation of what seemed to be half the population of Westchester. Those who stole from the Tories and the British were called Skinners. Those who stole from us were called Cowboys. By the spring of 1779, Skinners and Cowboys had been largely done away with; my health, too.

On March 10, I sent my resignation to General Washington who accepted it with the polite sentiment that he “not only regretted the loss of a good officer, but the cause which made his resignation necessary.”

AT THE END OF MAY 1779, I was at West Point visiting General McDougall. Despite poor health, he was a fine officer and eloquent despite a stammer.

We sat out-of-doors beneath tall elms, overlooking the Hudson River. Aides came and went from the large frame-house he used as headquarters. There was a certain amount of stir that day, for 6,000 British troops had just left New York City and were now landing on both sides of the river below Peekskill. McDougall had been trying for some days to get word to Washington in New Jersey. But none of his messengers had got through.

McDougall was indignant at the course the war had taken, or not taken. “That Congress!” He spoke with a trace of Scots accent. “I swear they are the worst men in the country!” All soldiers agreed. It was well-known that those few delegates who bothered to attend the Continental Congress preferred currency speculation to supporting the army. But then Congress thought that the war was as good as over. Washington himself had led them to believe that with the arrival of the French fleet our victory was assured.

In due course, the French fleet did arrive and Washington was able to make his long-anticipated strike at New York. Between the French fleet and the American army the British were as good as dead or so everyone thought, not taking into account Washington’s gift for defeat which once again carried the day.

To begin with, no one saw fit to acquaint the French admiral d’Estaing with the mysteries of New York’s port. As a result, when the hour of battle arrived, the French fleet could not pass the bar at the harbour entrance while Washington’s favourite general, John Sullivan, in attempting to carry out his master’s strategy, ignominiously lost the field to the British garrison. In disgust, the French fleet sailed south.

“I tell you, Burr, if it wasn’t for the French fleet in the English Channel, the British would drive us clear to the Ohio.” McDougall stammered over the second “b” as though the word so begun was too vile to complete.

We would have been even more disturbed if we had known that the war was going to continue in desultory fashion for three more years with Washington avoiding, as much as possible, all military action. Partly because inaction was now congenial to his nature; partly because the army of some 14,000 he had commanded at the famous “victory” of Monmouth Court House had now dwindled to almost nothing through lack of funds, and through a mystical faith on the part of Congress in the victory that was somehow bound to be ours simply because of the French alliance.